Amanda Nunes made good on her promise to get revenge in emphatic fashion when she stepped into the cage at UFC 277.
That pay-per-view took place on this day, July 30, in 2022. Two titles were on the line at Dallas’ American Airlines Center, with Julianna Pena defending the women’s bantamweight gold in the main event and an interim flyweight belt being on the line between Brandon Moreno and Kai Kara-France in the co-headliner.
For ‘The Venezuelan Vixen’, UFC 277 marked her first defense after shocking the world seven months prior. Pena submitted Nunes in one of the promotion’s greatest-ever upsets in December 2021, making good on her promise to end the Brazilian’s two-division reign.
But while Pena vowed to repeat the feat and prove her UFC 269 triumph was not a fluke, Nunes had other plans — and they were brutal…
Amanda Nunes rematch left Julianna Pena with a ‘chunk missing from her forehead’
Nunes handily beat Pena at UFC 277, laying a beatdown on her arch-rival across five rounds in Texas.
After multiple knockdowns and an onslaught of punches that left the then-defending champ bloody and disfigured, the ‘Lioness’ had her hand raised by way of a unanimous decision that saw three lopsided 50-44, 50-44, and 50-43 scorecards go the way of Nunes.
UFC president Dana White detailed just how bad the beatdown was during his post-fight press conference, revealing that the damage was so brutal that Pena had to see a plastic surgeon.
“Julianna’s got a big chunk missing from her forehead,” White said. “She’s going to see a plastic surgeon right now.
“She’ll take some time to heal, and then I don’t know. She got pretty banged up tonight. It was like five or six knockdowns in the first two rounds. She was hurt. She needs to take some time off, relax, spend some time with her daughter and then we’ll go from there.
“I thought it was completely dominant,” White continued. “There was five knockdowns in the first two rounds. There’s a big difference between submission attempts and knockdowns. They’re not even comparable. Julianna’s tough as nails and her will to win is second-to-none. She wanted to win.”
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Julianna Pena still holds hope of an Amanda Nunes trilogy despite latest setback
Three years on from her battering at the hands of Nunes in their rematch, Pena is not giving up in her quest of a feud-settling trilogy with the ‘Lioness’.
She missed out on that in June 2023 after withdrawing from UFC 289. After Pena pulled out, Nunes instead dominated Irene Aldana in Canada before announcing a surprise retirement.
It did not take long for the Brazilian to reverse that decision and commit to a comeback, with Nunes targeting the Pena vs. Kayla Harrison winner. Though that reignited the then-champ’s hope for a third showdown with her two-time rival, things did not go as planned for Pena this past June.
Harrison submitted Pena at UFC 316 via kimura, denting her plan to stand across from Nunes inside the Octagon again. But ‘The Venezuelan Vixen’ is not giving up.
Pena caused a stir post-fight when she outlined her intention to challenge whoever emerges from Harrison’s expected defense against Nunes as bantamweight queen.